I like to use uBlock Origin's element picker to remove parts of websites that I don't want to look at. I don't think uMatrix can do that, although it covers the most basic adblocker functionality.
When I tried it seemed I had to type stuff into an edit field, but I‘m probably wrong.
Using the element picker to block HN's footer generates a rule like this:
! 7/8/2018, 6:33:00 PM https://news.ycombinator.com/news
news.ycombinator.com###hnmain > tbody > tr:nth-of-type(4) > td
The first line is just a comment informing you when and where you added it.It takes two mouse presses to disable the blocker for the current domain, so if something seems off it's easy to check.